Attributes

Attributes

Attributes enable store administrators to customize product, category, or customer profile properties without having to change the code or database schema. For example, a store administrator can add a "Megapixels" attribute to digital cameras or a "Genre" attribute to movies.

Attributes support multiple languages, so you can give language-specific values to an attribute such as product description.

Key Classes

In Core:

Attribute - Represents an attribute. For example, "Megapixels" or "Genre".

AttributeValueGroup - Represents a group of AttributeValues. For example, a movie SKU has the AttributeValues "Action" and "This is a movie description."

CategoryType - Contains an AttributeGroup that applies to categories of this CategoryType.

ProductType - Contains two AttributeGroups that apply to products and SKUs of this ProductType. For example, a movie's "Genre" attribute applies at the product level while the "Blu-ray" attribute applies at the SKU level.

AttributeMultiValueType

Certain attributes may have more than one value associated. For example, the attribute "colors" may contain "Red, Blue, Yellow". The attribute value is encoded as text and can be parsed back to its elements.

AttributeMultiValueType specifies the type of encoding used if the attribute is multi-valued.

Note:

The entire encoded text cannot be longer than 65535 characters.

There are three supported types

AttributeMultiValueType

Database Value

ImportExport Data Value

Effect

Single Value

0

false

Attribute is not a multi-value and does not need to be decoded

Legacy

1

true

Attribute is multi-valued where every value is separated by a comma. Values cannot contain commas.